


Making a Mark

by jayburding



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, M/M, Magical Tattoos, Moving Tattoo(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 15:12:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10721850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/jayburding
Summary: Marks are more trouble than they're worth, especially if you get Viktor "blank until Katsudon showed up" Nikiforov talking about them. Yuri really doesn't want to have this conversation, especially with a new Mark growing on his face that he hasn't seen yet.





	Making a Mark

He’s watching the other Yuri go through his short programme when his cheek starts to itch. He doesn’t realise at first, wrapped up in footwork and jumps, and that unsettling feeling verging dangerously close to enjoyment as the step sequence comes off without a slip. Far too engrossed, the first he knows of Viktor beside him is when fingertips brush against the side of his face.

“The hell are you doing?” he hisses, smacking Viktor’s hand away.

“You’re thinking very hard, Yura,” Viktor says with a pointed look. “It shows.”

Yuri can feel it now, the barest tingle that means a Mark is spreading over his skin. He throws his hood up the second he does, brushes his hair down over that side and hopes that’ll be enough to cover whatever it is that’s starting to show. Too late for Viktor, but better than letting the whole rink see.

Viktor rests his arms on the boards beside him, and manages to say nothing for all of a minute. It’s impressive for Viktor.

“You know,” Viktor says in that gentle way he sometimes has, the one that always puts Yuri’s back up immediately. “It’s ok to like him too. He’s very easy to love isn’t he?”

Viktor really does have a supernatural ability to make things weird in two sentences or less. Yuri doesn’t want to know what the hell gave him that idea.

“Bugger off, old man. I’m making sure he remembers his quad salchow since you couldn’t teach him.” If he pulls his hood down a little further it’s no one else’s business but his own.

“Oh, so that’s how it is,” Viktor says, eyes twinkling. Perfect, blank skinned Viktor who never has to worry whether every errant thought in his head is marching up and down his face for the world to see. Bastard. “Do you intend to beat me at coaching too?”

“Like it would take much, you’re not very good at it.”

“Listening to Yakov again?”

“Lilia.”

“Ouch.”

Katsudon, oblivious to them both, lands the salchow exactly as Yuri taught him. Yuri wants to grin right in Viktor’s face, but he can feel the mark on his cheek spreading and he doesn’t even know what the damn thing looks like yet to try and bluff it away.

The way Viktor’s looking at him, it’s probably mortifying. Again.

“Well I hope you don’t think I’m going to give in without a fight,” Viktor says, smirking.

“Who says you’d win even if it came to a fight?” Yuri retorts, scrubbing at his face like that’s ever made a mark move in the history of anything.

“What can I say? When it comes to the things that I love, I fight dirty. I’m a very selfish man.”

Yuri snorts, though something in his chest flips over at how easily Viktor says that word. “Really? That definitely doesn’t show.” It’s completely true of course, but it feels easier when Viktor laughs too. This is heading somewhere heavy and Yuri’s really not up for that.

“Yes, well, I prefer to keep my Marks for myself,” Viktor says. “Selfish.” His hand creeps up to his chest, rests over his heart like it always does when he talks like this, which is thankfully rare.

Yuri’s seen the Marks there, the only one he’s ever seen on Viktor, while they were in Hasetsu and Viktor insisted on using the hot springs at every possible opportunity. Thought they were bruises at first and choked on his own rage that someone would dare lay hands on Viktor. Yuuri had thought so too when he first saw them, flailed and fretted over the sheer number of them until Viktor had assured them both the little blue smudges were Marks.

Now Katsudon wondered if they were petals, like the roses Viktor wore in his hair years before, while Yuri wondered how thick you had to be not to recognise your own fingerprints. They emerged everywhere the two of them touched, even Yuri had noticed that by now, and were nearly halfway to forming a full handprint over Viktor’s heart. It was gross really.

Yuri’s never seen a Mark for himself, or Yakov, or anyone else Viktor might or might not have in his life that would warrant one. It’s like no other relationship in his life has had any impact on him except Yuuri.

“So why does that one show then?” Yuri snaps, turning away so he doesn’t have to look at where some inferior model with his name has plastered his Marks all over Viktor when Yuri couldn’t even get him to remember a promise.

“I can’t help it,” Viktor says, “or maybe I don’t want to.”

He shrugs like it’s nothing, like you can just decide if and when your Marks are visible, or where for that matter; like “helping it” is something you do with all other Marks apart from the ones you got from the guy you’re sickeningly in love with.

(Yuri definitely can’t help it under those circumstances either, but he’s sure as hell not telling _Viktor_ that.)

“So that’s the one you don’t want to help, but everyone else’s you cover up and hide like you’re ashamed? You really are an ass.”

Yuri’s not pissed off that he’s that easy to forget. He already knew that about Viktor after he broke his promise and ran off to the other side of the world to get a different Yuri. A better one. But there’s a difference between being a forgetful asshole and deliberately favouring one person over others and making sure everyone knows it.

“Would you like to see it?” Viktor asks. “The mark you left on me?” His hand has slipped from his heart to hover lower down over his ribs.

It would be an actual bruise, or a brand. Something ugly and painful, where Yuri Plisetsky had made a place for himself where he wasn’t wanted, forced another person to acknowledge him by being vulgar enough that he couldn’t be ignored. Something Viktor would want to hide.

“Why would I?” he says instead. “It’s probably nothing even when you’re not hiding it. Barely there. Yours is.”

It’s such blatant bullshit even an idiot like Viktor should see through it- he’s seen the step sequence painted across Yuri’s back in the onsen, how could he not know?- but he doesn’t call Yuri out. Instead, Viktor’s hand drops back to the boards and doesn’t rise again. Yuri almost apologises. Almost.

 “You know, you’ve never been very good at hiding your marks, Yura,” Viktor says, looking right at him like there’s something else showing in his face. He’s seen stars burst across his jaw from anger before, it wouldn’t be the first time. “You live too much inside your own skin for that. You’re immediate, and you demand to be seen.”

“And you don’t?” Yuri asks, incredulous. “You live for the damn audience.”

“I love to surprise people,” Viktor says like it’s an admission rather than the most obvious thing in the world. “I want to show them things they’ve never seen before, take their breath away. But I don’t want them to see me. You’re far braver than me.”

Which explains nothing at all. Viktor’s entire career is just one long example of a man drawing the eye of everyone he can. His interviews, his interactions with fans, his sponsor work and extracurriculars, everything is geared towards drawing focus, keeping the attention on him.

But then Viktor is also a man with the clearest skin Yuri’s ever seen, or was at least. Until he met Viktor he didn’t think it was possible for someone to be so unmarked. No one ever looks away from Viktor, and yet somehow he glides by, immaculate and indifferent. Except for Yuuri. Yuuri’s always the exception.

Yuri glares at him, but Viktor remains frustratingly opaque. “You expect me to believe that you of all people are shy?”

Viktor smiles. It’s the smile he wears for the cameras, for the fans, just before he winks and sends them all fluttering; idiots.

“No, not shy. I’m a coward, Yura,” Viktor says, the same bright way he might say dinner was ready. “I don’t want people to see me, so I don’t let them. Keep them at arm’s length and no one sees you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Yuri sneers. It’s got him thinking now though, and all he can see is the moment Viktor’s smiles drop once he thinks no one’s looking. The many, many times he’s smiled when he shouldn’t, when he should be anything else except vacantly happy, because that’s his automatic response when someone’s looking at him. And all the while his skin is empty.

Actually it makes a lot of sense. And it pisses Yuri off.

“Great, so you’re a coward. I could have told you that,” he grumbles. “Why don’t you hide Katsudon’s Mark on you like everyone else’s then?”

Viktor shrugs, and shouts encouragement as Yuuri passes them by, calling a correction on his feet as he turns into the prep for the flip. Of course, Yuuri fixes immediately, beaming, a flurry of blue rose petals sweeping across his face, there and gone in the time it takes him to jump. The both of them are sickening, Yuri thinks, trying to ignore the itch as whatever is apparent on his face continues to shift and change.

“I thought it was obvious,” Viktor says, and reaches up to touch Yuri’s cheek and whatever is evolving there. “He makes me brave.”

It’s a good line, probably works on Yuuri who only has to hear the most pat compliment from Viktor to burst with rose petals and gold shadows. But Yuuri Katsuki met his untouchable idol and discovered he could lay a Mark on him, where Yuri Plisetsky has been rinkmates for six years with a man so closed off that nothing anyone does ever touches him. Except this. Except Yuuri.

 “You like being owned by him,” Yuri sneers. “That’s not bravery. You just found a different way to hide.”

Yuri ducks away from Viktor’s hand like it burns, and dashes away down the tunnel. He can feel the shift and warp of the Mark scrawled across his back, twisting with his anger into something more vicious. His face still itches with the other Mark, the one he doesn’t know yet.

He needs to see what this damn thing is before Katsudon starts asking as well.


End file.
